Long Day
by Midnight Raine
Summary: Dave muses about his past, and how it's made him the person he is now. I know, it's been done time upon time, but I tried not to be *too cliched*


"Long Day"  
Spoilers: A tiny one from "Such Sweet Sorrow", but mainly "Witch Hunt"  
Category: Dave angst, post scene to "Witch Hunt" (written in first person).  
Disclaimer: Nothing is mine, the characters are rented for 3 bucks a pop.  
Feedback: Miss Caran@aol.com  
Thanks to Maria for suggesting the lyrics, and her encouraging comments.  
"Knock down the walls  
It's alive in you  
Knock down the place  
You alone it's true  
Knock down the walls  
It's alive in you  
You're gonna keep your head up through it all  
You're gonna bust out oh  
Original prankster  
Break out yeah  
Original yeah  
Bust out oh  
Original Prankster  
You'll never stop now, stop now  
That's what the main men say"  
~~~"Original Prankster", by the Offspring. Consperecy of One  
  
  
How could Mark do this to me? I slammed the door to my apartment, fuming. I knew it had been dumb, and the sense of shame make my cheeks burn and my spine tingle.   
It had started out just another case, weirder then most. Why would a basically well off kid be using? It all came together for me when he started showing fear of his father. I saw so much of myself in him it was frightening. What happened to me didn't deserve to happen to anyone else. The memories had slowly started to creep back in my head, from some dusty corner of my mind I hoped never to travel to again. But they were nothing compared to the flashbacks.  
My father was screaming at me about something, but I couldn't hear the words because the pain in my arm was so great I couldn't hear, couldn't catch my breath. I kept praying, for an end, to pass out, for death, for something. Anything to get ride of this horrible pain.  
I shook my head, trying to get rid of the scene. That was all behind me now.  
I went to the bathroom, to change out of my scrub top, and I noticed the cigarette burns on my chest. After 15 years the scars still weren't gone. As were the emotional scars. Suddenly I pulled on a white T-shirt, deathly embarrassed although no one was there. I pulled a beer out of the refrigerator, and for the first time in my life I didn't want it. It tasted flat, and it made my stomach turn. It couldn't numb my pain anymore. It was probably for the better. I had had my first beer when I was 15, and by the time I was 16 I was an alcoholic. Sure, I managed to curve my heavy drinking. But whenever I got depressed it shot right back up.   
Drained of my energy, I fell onto my unmade bed. It wasn't that I never experienced a happy life. For a while, I had a wonderful life. Then my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. I guess I could tell she was going to die from the very beginning, even though no one had given me a solid answer. ("You're mother is very sick.") Everyone delicately tip toed around the subject, but I knew, and I had no idea what I would do without her. At night, I used to stay up and cry. That's when my father started drinking. All the warmth gradually left our house as my mother wasted away. I would start to cry spontaneously, for no apparent reason. My father had no idea how to treat this. Maybe it frightened him, not being able to help. I think the first time he hit me I was crying hard, and he slapped me, telling me to grow up, dammit, and be a man. I was too shocked to keep crying. We both were. Gradually it became less and less shocking, but still as awful. I was eight.  
I didn't have anyone to talk, to cry to. I had friends before, but I became withdrawn and only a few stuck by me. I still couldn't bring myself to tell them. After all, it was my fault I was stupid enough he had to do what he was doing. And I couldn't invite them over to my house, either. Roaches, food wrappers, beer bottles all over the place.  
Ever since my mom died I hated that place. Hated how small it was, how lonely it was, how the smoke crawled into your lungs and choked the air out of you, the heavy, depressing stench of alcohol, how dirty it was. I hated the memories. I hated having to go to school, having to make up excuses for the newest bruise, hating how the teachers looks showed how they didn't believe me, but still didn't do anything. I used to fall asleep all the time in class, after a while everyone just stopped caring. I stopped caring as well. I did my schoolwork, but I didn't put any heart into it. It wasn't that I couldn't, I was bright enough and had gotten A's before, but there was just no reason. I didn't have the money to go to college, and I was sure my father was not about to sacrifice valuable booze money so I could go. I always couldn't help shuddering when I passed McDonald's, because I was convinced that I was doomed to work there for all eternity, just another stage of this hell I called life.  
I don't think you could have paid me to go back to the house I used to live in. I don't even think you could have dragged me in kicking and screaming. That's how awful it was. I became aggressive, and a regular at the school principal's office. Never did it occur to them to send me to a social worker. I was just poor, hopeless Dave.  
Then there was hope. I had always been interested in medicine, and always dreamed of going to medical school, but I didn't think there'd be any hope for me except at McDonald's. But I heard from my aunt that my mother had a college fund for me, in my name, so my father couldn't have gotten in to it. Now eighteen, I had access to it. I used it to go to a nice school, nothing too fancy, I had to be conservative, and took a premed course. I actually did very well, I understood everything. But the night before the MCATs I was extremely nervous. I found myself up at 3:30 AM, pacing around until I was sure I had rubbed all the fuzz off the carpet in my living room. I remembered my father, remembered how he told me I was a moron and I'd never amount to anything, and remembered all the hurtful things he'd said to me, a thousand times worse then he ever did to me physically. My self esteem, which took so long to recover from my childhood days, suffered that night as old wounds reopened.   
Maybe it was the lack of sleep, or the lack of self esteem, but when I got my MCAT score back, I was sure I should give up and work at McDonald's. But once again, I had hope. A small college in Grenada was willing to accept me. I found out it had a reputation as being a party college, but hey! it was fine with me. I figured that I'd be able to get a decent education, and the parties were an added bonus. How wrong I was. The school wasn't very good, and no one took anything seriously. There were a lot of drugs on campus, and I'd like to say I never tried them, but who knows? I was drunk a lot of the time, and I've done a lot of crazy things while intoxicated. The hangovers made it hard to concentrate, and homework was far from first priority.   
When I got a job at County, I figured it could finally be like I always wanted. Lots of friends, a job to look forward to, a good house, a pretty girlfriend. I'd finally get to do what I wanted to do all along, *help people*.   
But nothing turns out as expected. No one thought I was much of a doctor. I was lazy and irresponsible, as Elizabeth so graciously pointed out to me that one summer night. In short, I had screwed up yet again. After she told me, I had seriously considered downing the whole bottle of aspirin I had in my cabinet, or slitting my wrists or *accidently* riding my bike in front of a car. The demons I had tried so hard to conquer were still alive. I had failed at the one thing I had tried so hard to achieve.   
Today was that day all over again. Never wanting to face Mark again but too much of a coward to try suicide.  
I couldn't help it. I started crying. I fell back on the bed, telling myself the words my father had screamed at me thousands of times before. "Men ... don't ... cry..."  
What does he know about being a man? He beat a helpless child, and then if he had any brain's left to realize what he did was wrong, he never tried to contact me, never tried to apologize. Not like that was a bad thing.  
I surrendered to the tears, and my body was racked with sobs. Usually I did this in the bathroom, with the shower turned on full blast so the people in the neighboring apartments couldn't hear me.  
I don't care if they hear me, it doesn't matter. Nothing matters to me anymore.  
________________________  
The End  



End file.
